4 Gamers, 1 CPU


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Inspiration:

Hello fellow Gamers and Hardware experts,


first of all, for those who are interested, the tale:

 


This an attempt to infuse new life in our private LAN-Party scene.
Modern internet thought us all: In order to increase engagement, one must lower the barrier to entry as much as possible.
The most boring part of a LAN-Party is rebuilding the setup at home. 
Also, over the years, some of us got fancy and added external kable management to their desktop, 
which is nice, but in some cases makes it impossible to get the setup moving without disassembling it first.
Therefore, we need:

 

Goal
A PC build which allows the laziest 3 - 4 Gamers to attend a LAN-Party while only bringing their mouse and keyboard (and their USB-Headset)


I have:

  • a "flexible" budget, but I want to spent es less money as reasonable possible
  • a AMD HD7850, 2x AMD 560, 1x Nvidia 980, therefore I should be good on the required GPUs for now

 

I think I need:

  • a motherboard with at least 4x PCIe 3.0 4x slots and "nice IOMMU groups" which do allow for GPU passthrough 
  • 4 cores per Person would be nice, but 3 cores per Person should be fine as well
  • 6+ GiB of RAM per Person

 

What comes to mind:

  • a AMD 1920X build (64x PCIe 3.0; 12 Cores). CPU sells new for 250, motherboards with 4x PCIe 4x start at 300, 32 GiB DDR4 2666 start at 110
  • some cheap old Intel server hardware?


The Questions:

Q1) Alternatives to a x399 / 1920X build?
Q1a) Cheap Intel LGA 1567/2011 server hardware?
Q1b) Maybe even first generation AMD EPIC hardware? (unlikely that they will go out of use any time soon, and way more expensive then 1920X if bought new)
Q2) Any personal experiences to tell?
Q3) [!] How do I make sure that GPU Passthrough will work? 
 

Looking forward to your suggestions 😃

Edited by Sweepi
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Doing exactly that- with slightly more powerful hardware:

Asrock taichi x399 with Tr2950 (but started with a 1920x that I am looking to sell.)

64Gb Corsair Dominator

2x WD 1Tb nvme Passed to 2 machines

2x Plexstor 512 Gb Passed to 2 machines

2x Samsung 1Tb for cache array

3x WD 3Tb array data

2x 2070RTX EVGA

2x 960 EVGA SSC

Allegro pro 4x USB pcie

U.2 port to pcie 4x adapter

4x insignia usb hubs

 

We play several games that have a local Docker server like 7 days to die and Ark- which run on the same physical machine with @ich777 's magnificent dockers.  We also do a lot of other AAA titles like monster hunter world, borderlands games, fortnite, ect.  Rarely encounter any stutter or real issues with my setup.  It did take quite a while to get everything dialed in perfectly, and the performance tuning is still quite the process- but I have had everything solid for months and even had to recover my machines once- so pretty confident in that process also.  Be aware that USB will be one of the larger challenges to get everyone able to use their own usb CONTROLLER.  The allegro pro I bought has been discontinued- so getting everyone their own controller on a interface that is still available when 4 GPUs are in- will be difficult.

Edited by jordanmw
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